MAXIMA, LISP and COMMON-LISP package on GCL

On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 02:29, Vadim V. Zhytnikov wrote:

> On the other hand ANSI GCL has two LISP and
> COMMON-LISP packages.  The former is legacy CLtL1
> package and the latter is intended to be ANSI
> compliant.  Thus ANSI features remains unexposed
> in MAXIMA package.  This is the reason why new
> James' to_lisp() REPL doesn't handle lisp errors
> properly on GCL (maxima::*debugger-hook* isn't
> the same symbol as cl::*debugger-hook*).

Vadim, you must be reading my mind lately. You have fixed and/or
identified the sources of all the problems I have been most worried
about. I am very grateful.

> Ultimately on can get rid of old LISP package by
> renaming it to LISP-LEGACY and making LISP
> alias to COMMON-LISP.  Unfortunately it can't be done
> since GCL Maxima makes use of another old style SERROR
> package which conflicts with COMMON-LISP (conflicts with
> CONDITIONS which supersedes SERROR in COMMON-LISP).
> 
> The quick fix to the problem is to import
> required ANSI symbols from COMMON-LISP explicitly.

Yes, lets do that.

> This is not so hard since right now we need just few of
> them.  But it isn't right approach in the long run.
> IMHO the right way is to remove SERROR entirely
> but this is not so simple and require thorough
> testing. I think it can be done later with next
> Maxima and GCL releases.

I agree. 

--Jim